The study of ornament in Greek and Roman art has been the focus of increasing scholarly interest over the last decade, with many publications shedding new light on the dynamics of ornatus in antiquity, and the discourses that shaped and situated it. Through an analysis of the depiction of gemstones in Roman wall painting, this article demonstrates the importance of ornamental details both to the mechanics of two-dimensional representation and to the interpretation of the images they adorned. I argue that by evoking the material qualities and sensual pleasures of real precious stones, painted gems served on the one hand to enhance the illusory reality of wall painting, and on the other to extol the delights of luxury and refinement—that is, of ornamentation itself.
How and why did Catholic votaries in early seventeenth-century Antwerp allegorise the relation between the material circumstances and spiritual properties of the vita Christi? And how was this relation analogised to that between public and private zones of devotion? These questions prove crucial to our understanding of manuscript MPM R 35 Vita S. Joseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum maximi iconibus delineata ac versiculis ornata (Life of St. Joseph, Husband of the Most Blessed Virgin, Greatest of the Patriarchs, Portrayed in Images and Ornamented with Verses), a small octavo volume housed in the printroom of the Plantin Moretus Museum [Figs. 15.1–15.24]. The book consists of forty-six engraved images comprising two complete print series: the Vita S. Joseph [Figs. 15.1–15.5, 15.19–15.24], published and engraved by Theodoor Galle, perhaps with the assistance of his brother Cornelis and/or his son Jan, and the Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to the Loving Votary or, alternatively, Heart Sacred to the Loving Votary of Jesus), designed, engraved, and published by Antoon II Wierix before 1604 [Figs. 15.6–15.18].
Research on the re-use of Roman material culture has often focused on repurposed architectural elements or re-carved portraits, and new approaches have increasingly focused on culture, context and memory with praxis, agency meaning, materiality, and reception as key issues. Sculpted portraits have been key players in the scholarly discourse beginning with the portraits of Rome’s ‘bad emperors’ such as Caligula, Nero, and Domitian reconfigured as a result of damnatio memoriae in the first century. The third century, however, proves to be a critical moment that witnesses a shift towards affirmative interventions that seek to refurbish and access the positive and legitimising aspects of the original images. Portraits are now redacted from likenesses of ‘good emperors’ such as Augustus, Hadrian, and Trajan to invoke the venerable authority of the imperial past. Private portraiture in the third century also provides evidence for secondary interventions not motivated by denigration but by the prestige of re-use. In a funerary context, the reconfiguration of portraits could confer ancestral honour and status. Ultimately the reuse of portraits, both imperial and private, can be read as highly creative revitalising acts of positive recycling.
Compiled in late fifteenth-century Brabant, Metropolitan Museum Album 2003.476, known as the Groenendaal Passion, is a customised manuscript prayerbook organised around first-state impressions of the Grosse Passion, a series of twelve prints designed, engraved, and published ca. 1480 by the master engraver-goldsmith Israhel van Meckenem, who was resident in Bocholt (North Rhine-Westphalia) [Figs. 11.1–11.20]. All twelve show evidence of plate tone, and the set as a whole is an early printing, exceptionally fine, probably acquired for the express purpose of illustrating the meditative spiritual exercises on the Passion of Christ that the series currently anchors [Figs. 11.4–11.15]. The book takes the form of a rapiarium, a collection of religious texts in Latin and Middle Dutch gathered from various sources in order to facilitate pious devotion and prayerful edification.
Jan David, S.J.’s Duodecim specula (Antwerp: Jan Moretus, 1610), an innovative emblematic treatise in twelve chapters, focuses on various kinds and degrees of specular image generated by the human soul. Each chapter responds to an opening imago, designed and engraved by Theodoor Galle, that illustrates the operations of the mirror in question. Three of the imagines, v. The Mirror of Others’ Eyes, viii. The Mirror of Created Things, and x. The Mirror of Example, rather than displaying persons, actions, or things that fall under the purview of the respective mirror, instead depict the mirrored image that such a speculum is seen to reflect. Accordingly, as printed imagines that prove upon closer inspection to contain specular imagines or, better, that function as pictorial representations of particular kinds of image, these imagines imaginum (images of images) can be said to produce a trompe-l’oeil effect. They ask the reader-viewer to consider why s/he thinks s/he sees a present image when what is actually seen by the eye is a pictured image, a pictured picture, doubly mediated by the process of representation. My essay examines how and why this deceptive effect was marshaled by David as a figure of thought: by articulating the manner and meaning of these three specula in particular, he offers the reader-viewer a therapeutic antidote wherewith to combat the human propensity for idolatry and self-deception.
This volume brings together papers that were first presented in October 2011 at an international symposium held at the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art. Made possible by the generosity of the Lunder Foundation, “Palaces of Art: Whistler and the Art Worlds of Aestheticism” was the inaugural event of the Lunder Consortium for Whistler Studies, a scholarly partnership founded in 2010 by the Freer Gallery, the Colby College Museum of Art, and the University of Glasgow. The Art Institute of Chicago joined in 2012. As caretakers of the world’s largest collections of the work of James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), the consortium is not only dedicated to supporting and disseminating new research on the American expatriate artist but also encouraging scholarship that moves beyond monographic or biographical approaches to consider the various “art worlds” in which Whistler and his contemporaries operated. The diversity of topics and methodologies deployed at this landmark conference reflected this expansive, pluralizing approach. In addition to reflecting on Whistler’s place in the history of art, speakers considered such diverse topics as the construction of aesthetic subjectivities, the relationship between Aestheticism and commodity culture, and the role of global networks in the transmission and reception of Whistlerian style. Gathered together, these conference proceedings challenge preconceptions about Aestheticism and Whistler’s place within the Aesthetic movement. This notoriously thinskinned painter, who had a particular talent for “the gentle art of making enemies,” was also profoundly interconnected to a cosmopolitan array of artists, writers, collectors, and dealers. Here, authors convincingly overturn the long-held notion of Whistler as an eccentric loner who operated outside of conventional art historical narratives, whether American, British, or modernist. Networks, mutual infl uences, collaborative endeavors, and the enduring power of artistic creation and aesthetic attention are some of the themes that recur throughout this book. Far from being conclusive, these essays open up the field of Whistler studies and will doubtless inspire new work on Whistler’s aesthetic vision and the complexity of his cultural contexts.
The introductory essay examines the principles of Jesuit emblematic usage, as codified by Antonio Possevino, S.J. (1533–1611) in his educational treatise Bibliotheca selecta de ratione studiorum of 1603 and developed by two of the Society’s key emblematists: Jan David, S.J. (1545–1613) in his Duodecim specula of 1610 and Herman Hugo, S.J. (1588–1629) in his Pia desideria of 1624. The essay concludes by summarizing the five articles contained in this issue of the Journal of Jesuit Studies and then, on that basis, offering a brief account of the state of the question in the study of Jesuit emblematics.
This volume of essays by the great emblem scholar and bibliographer Peter Daly centers on questions of emblematic construction and interpretation: simply put, “how emblems were actually read” (3) by their early modern audiences. Concomitantly, he explores the theoretical implications of the various plausible responses provided in the book’s ten chapters. Along the way, Daly astutely summarizes the state of the field on a number of important topics: the historiography of emblem studies in the twentieth century, extending from Mario Praz’s Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1939; 2nd ed., London: Warburg Institute, 1964) and William Heckscher and Karl-August Wirth’s Emblem, Emblembuch (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1959) to Rosemary Freeman’s English Emblem Books (London: Chatto & Windus, 1948) and Albrecht Schöne’s introduction of Emblemata: Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1967); the contested status of the emblem triplex, comprising an inscriptio (either titular or in the form of a motto), a pictura (usually pictorial, though sometimes exclusively verbal), and a subscriptio (often but not always epigrammatic), the tripartite format of which proves anything but prescriptive for the history of the emblem; the argumentative and hermeneutic relation amongst the emblem’s textual and pictorial parts, whose mutual interaction leaves open the issue of semantic priority; and, of special significance to readers of this journal, the pastoral and/or political functions of the various types of emblem book produced by Jesuit authors, both individual and corporate, between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.
This dossier about Maya iconography emphasizes the importance of studying ancient Maya images in relation to three analytical axes: material support, physical context, and historical context. This essay adds a fourth analytical axis: the experience that people had with works of art, especially with sculpted media. To follow this path, the essay investigates the importance of touch and interaction in ancient Maya art. The somatic experience of images, objects, and buildings was a crucial part of their significance and aesthetic valuation. To these ends, the article focuses on the physical experience that people –– artists or users –– had with the materials and works. It focuses on two case studies: the small bone implements from Burial 116 of Tikal (Guatemala) and the monumental stone sculptures of Piedras Negras (Guatemala). This research seeks to reconstruct their material contexts and to investigate how the images and texts relate both to the material supports and the places where they were erected, used, or deposited. These studies reveal how Maya artists fostered touch, movement, and other interactions and how these actions could have functioned as ritual experiences.